Admitting Things

Don’t Write About Teachers

It was a Sunday, a day like any other Sunday. I went to look at the NCES Digest of Education Statistics to see if any more tables from the 2013 version had been released. To my delight, I found some interesting stuff; but most of the NCES Tables are designed to be printed as reports, and are in no shape to be pulled into the software I typically use, Tableau.

I sent it off to some groups, and posted it to the NACAC e-list, an email group of college admissions professionals and independent and high school counselors. It’s an open list, and Valerie Strauss from the Washington Post asked if she could share it. It’s a blog and it’s public, so I happily agreed. It was up that afternoon, and you can read it here.

In addition to the hundreds of comments this has drawn on the WaPo site (which could be a post in themselves), I’ve received lots of emails and posts about the visualization. They fall into several groups:

I’m trying to hurt teachers by showing how high salaries are

I’m trying to help teachers by showing how low salaries are

The data can’t be trusted because it’s from the Feds

The data doesn’t account for costs of living

The data doesn’t account for average service

The data isn’t split by union/non-union states

The data can’t be right because someone’s cousin makes way less than this

The data can’t be right because someone’s cousin makes way more than this

I shouldn’t have used red-green scales (and this person was right; I should know better).

Lessons learned, but good to repeat:

You can only viz the data you have

The limits of means as a measure of central tendency are not widely understood

Everyone’s an expert

I’m an idiot for stepping into this without understanding what a political landmine teacher pay is.

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4 thoughts on “Don’t Write About Teachers”

I agree on the color scale change, not only because of colorblindness but because the red-green scheme politicized the map even further than the numbers alone would have done. I’m actually going to keep the original image to demonstrate how creative choices lead to symbolic content, regardless of intention (I’m an English teacher). Having the high salaries in red (stop) and the low in green (go) implied a position, even if erroneously.

I believe the fault lies in the table itself. When data is “estimated” forward for a number of years using history of years past there is always a danger.
Statistical analysis being what it is, wouldn’t it have been better if the data had been actual rather than extrapolated based on past performance. As an example, Louisiana had an increase in the Minimum Funding across all Parishes in the School Year 1979-1980. During each of the School Years between 2009-2014 there has been a decrease in the Minimum Funding. This means Teacher Pay was decreased at every level of Education in the State of Louisiana from Pre-Kindergarten to University in every year from 2009-2014.
I believe this is an exact opposite of the data reflected in your Table.
The Minimum Funding Level for a PhD. with a Doctorate of Education with 25 years experience Teaching would be around $16,000 per year I believe. Any money above that would depend on the Parish being taught in.